It’s Symbiotic, man.

I have been quiet of late due to starting a new job with an insane learning curve. Another reason for my lack of posting has been the endless drama circulating the blogging world as regards to SWTOR. To whit, most posts seem to argue about whether it’s even okay to talk about this game, and if it is okay just who is allowed to possibly have access to their own right to freedom of speech. I could have lots to say on this topic but I have recently become bored with arguing with people on the internet; it’s akin to masturbating with a cheese grater – slightly interesting, but mostly painful.

However, today Goblinworks have their new blog post up and I thought that this was a marvellous opportunity to ramble on my own blog for a bit. Truth be told they blogged about death penalties in the new Pathfinder MMO in mid-January, but I was a bit busy and I find the whole death argument just a tad tedious anyway. But their post from today concerns how PvE will function within their game world, and it is very interesting indeed. How interesting? Well, let’s just say that if this game doesn’t get made I’ll probably do nasty things to small furry animals.

In Pathfinder Online, the players are the content. And the PvE world is made up of a symbiotic relationship between fighters, crafters, and builders. Each one depends on the other for their survival and prosperity. They have a nice little graphic on how it works here, which I’m posting hopefully with their permission:

They go into the detail of how this works in their post, but what gets me excited is the possibility to exist and play in a dynamic world based in a fantasy setting. The idea is very comparable to EVE online, but I don’t particularly enjoy space games and I think there are a lot of other old school players out there with the same preference as mine. The vast majority of content will exist in the world in real time, (as opposed to being instanced), and will change and evolve or disappear depending on player actions. These are broken down into wandering monsters, harvesting hazards, and ruins, lairs and caverns. So let’s say that a bunch of harvesters have found a valuable source of material a fair way from their base of operations. They may find that they require protection from raiders on their operation and will thus engage some adventurers to help them deal with the problem. A deal will of course have to be agreed upon, and who knows – perhaps the adventurers will renege on the agreement and steal the resources. The possibilities for gameplay in this vein are almost endless. One idea that I really like is the fact that caverns are both populated by high level monsters and are generally found deep below civilized areas. This means that areas will remain dynamic sources of PvE play even after they have become fully settled.

There is also a little addendum where they postulate the idea of how to handle quests. These will be more along the lines of what we know as modules from the tabletop gaming world. Some will be free and available to all, and some may involve being purchased via micro-transactions. The jury is still out on this one but they have also added the caveat that there may be opportunities for players to create their own content which they can sell themselves in the in-game shop. Now that’s a good idea – get your playerbase to make content for you.

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2 Responses to “It’s Symbiotic, man.”

more infos are up. i am realy hyped about this. since i dont play any mmo these days anymore i am thinking about getting some pen&paper group together. think its time to see if some of the old guys are still playing. time to go to some cons this year. lucky me germanys biggest rpgcon is in my town every year. good old times…